


And your bird(s) can sing

by SilverMaxwell (Endless_beginnings)



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, lot of hurt and comfort probably, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 20:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21482293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endless_beginnings/pseuds/SilverMaxwell
Summary: It was better off not to have wings.You were looked down upon, seen as unnatural.though they are rare nowadays, It is common (and even enforced) for a child born or sprouting wings to be taken to the hospital where they would be promptly removed.As of now, there are no more winged people. Any new ones are taken care of as soon as the first stages of development.that's what the world thinks, at least.Then there are the Beatles.requested by anon: The Beatles are the only 4 people in the world with secret wings that they have to hide from the rest of the world. Maybe some mclennon and starrisonora request that took a life of its own.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	And your bird(s) can sing

**Author's Note:**

> HEY I LOVE THIS AU

When Richard Starkey Jr. was born the skies were clear and Elsie Starkey’s life felt complete.

As she rested underneath the thin covers of her bed Elsie watched her husband, Richard, stand over the bassinet as soon as the midwife had placed their son down, simply watching the small bundle in white sleep, Elsie hoped that the peaceful joy she felt in the room would last forever.

It ended in October.

Ritchie (As she had started to call him) had been having constant crying fits for days now.

Her mother had suspected that he was teething, giving her a simple list of home remedies to try as she didn't have enough for a doctor.

She had tried all of them; from rubbing bits of ginger on his gums, rubbing her son’s face and even using brandy. None of them appeared to have _ any _effect and she resorted to simply carrying her child and soothing him for all hours of the day.

Elsie had noticed them when she had prepared her 4-month-old for a bath.

_ Of course, _ she had seen the slight discoloration on her sons back. Two blotchy pink spots mirrored between her son’s shoulders. she had simply concluded that they were birthmarks, nothing to fuss or worry about.

But when she spotted the soft, downy humps on his back, she screamed.

Ritchies’ cries are loud in her ears.

The tub of warm water she had set out is going cold. She sits beside it on her knees with a hand covering her mouth in shock, eyes wide and _ panic _ filled her entire being. 

Her baby’s cries do not lessen as his tiny fists grab at the bedsheets under him.

Elsie pushes down the panic growing in her chest and stands. Ritchie’s crying lessens as he sees his mother, a fat tear rolls down his round face. Elsie’s hands shake as she takes hold of her baby to sit him up again, resisting the urge to cry as she spots the stubs again.

‘Wings’ her brain supplies her before she can deny it.

Her baby turns to look at her, big shiny blue eyes that meet her own and fill her with worry.

Elsie bathes him as if nothing happened, taking her time like she would any other day. The water is filled with suds and Ritchie kicks his feet as he babbles to himself.

Elsie’s mind wanders as she rubbed the washcloth around the new appendages on her son’s back. Memories of her grandparents ranting about the _ freakish _ nature of those with wings, women in their Sunday best talking behind their bibles of fallen angels.

The boy in year 4 with the red cardinal feathers she never saw again.

She dresses Ritchie in a blue knitted romper. she hovers over the wicker bassinet before placing him down on his back.

When her husband comes home that evening he is met with Elsie sitting on the couch, a recently fed baby in her arms.

Richard sr. threw his coat onto the armchair of the living room. He empties his pockets on the small table nearby as he greets his wife with a brief kiss and heads straight to the kitchen.

“What's for dinner?” he casually began, not noticing the sullen expression on his wife.

“Spam hash and carrot salad” was Elsie’s simple reply. Ritchie babbled softly.

“Work was slow today”, he begins as he serves himself a plate, trying to start up a conversation. “Robert was talking about those new tv models...”

“Richard”, Elsie’s voice cut him off, worry creeping through her voice and her husband was by her side in an instant.

“Yes? Is something wrong?” He asked, his brows furrowed as he watched his wife begin to undo the buttons on his son’s shirt.

“Is something wrong with our son? Elsie, I don’t…”

Richard froze when he caught sight of the lumps on the babies back.

The room was silent; Elsie stared up at her husband’s blank face wishing for him to show any emotion, even if it were to be anger.

One of his hands run down his face almost tiredly as he crossed his arms. Ritchie was sucking on his knuckles, blissfully unaware of what was happening around him.

“I’m stepping out for a smoke” was his only response.

As Richard stepped outside with his coat in hand Elsie tried not to stare at the pack of cigarettes on the table.

Nothing felt the same afterward.

Once the feathers started to grow in Richard left.

The downy wisps are slowly being replaced by white feathers, with spots of brown beginning to show.

Ringo is three and the wings are long enough to graze the ground.

There are holes in his shirts and he isn’t allowed to leave the house.

When he gets sick Elsie is scared. 

But the fear in her eyes must have been visible because the doctor looks at her once and whisks them to a private room, careful to cover his back.

The private rooms are usually provided to kids who are severely injured or sick, the room is large, much larger than any room in her home. Elsie takes to sitting in front of the window while Ritchie sleeps.

Though Ritchie is bound to his room to heal, that doesn’t mean he _ wants _to be there. He becomes bored with the games the hospital provides, as they usually require more people to play with. With his mother off at work at no one to visit him other than the nurse who checked on him.

She asks him when she comes to give him lunch.

“Do you want to go down with the other kids?” she proposes as she sets the tray beside him. The seven-year-old looked up at her with hopeful blues eyes. “Can I?” he asks quietly,

“I can fetch you a wheelchair and we can go for a little walk around” She whispers back with a smile. “You must get so bored here on your own”

Ritchie nods with what could have been the first genuine smile since being here.

Ritchie is quick to eat and as soon as the nurse returns he’s inching himself towards the edge of the bed.

The nurse is reaching to pick him up when his mother walks in.

Elsie screams a shrill “_ Stop!” _. 

“What do you think you’re doing? You can’t move him!” his mother screams and actually _ pushes _ the nurse away from Ritchie. The nurse stares wide-eyed at her. 

“But-” She tries to argue but Elsie cuts her off.

“No! _ Get out!” _

When Elsie finally calms down she tries to explain to Ritchie that they can’t risk him going out. That the nurse and doctor were already too many people knowing about him. She goes on for a few more minutes, trying to ignore the sad disappointment on her son’s face. 

When Ritchie gets better they are quick to leave.

Years pass, they try school with oversized shirts and vests. It _works_ but Ritchie’s too far behind, he can’t understand the lessons well and few seem to even bother speaking to him as they had never seen him before.

The second time around its tuberculosis. The doctors are good for they don’t even mention the feathers, they give him shirts that are three sizes too big and Elsie is thankful.

Ritchie picks up drumming to help with motor skills and joins the hospital band. Ritchie hates to admit it but he’s happy here, he has other kids to talk to and have fun with. He doesn’t tell his mom how sad he is when they finally leave.

Ritchie doesn’t go back to school this time. Elsie is happy to keep him inside.

As Ritchie Grows, so do the wings.

The house is quiet, Elsie is cooking despite the ache in her bones from working all day, fighting the urge to lie down. 

Ritchie feels bad about wanting to bring it up.

But he couldn’t take it anymore.

Dealing with the wings on his back was natural to him, the daily preening and washing, the way he held them to assure that he wouldn’t bump into things. He could deal with the soreness from holding them back for too long or the amount of time.

He couldn’t deal with being cooped up at home all day.

Ritchie felt like a literal caged bird.

Hours and hours of doing nothing, spotting kids his age run past the window in groups, happy with their freedom and Ritchie was _ jealous. _

The talk was intense; Ritchie trying to convince his mother to let him _ go _ and his mother trying to convince him to _ stay. _

Ritchie needed this, to be independent for once.

His mother bought him a large coat, it may have been second hand but it looked cool and Ritchie had given her the biggest hug.

The wings stopped growing when he was 15. White cream feathers with golden-brown blurbs of color decorating them, turning a more solid gold as they reached his shoulders.

Paul was seven when his back began to hurt.

Mary Mccartney yelled at her sons from the door of the entrance to their home, the rain outside growing heavier with each passing second.

“Boys! Get inside right now unless you want to catch a cold!” 

Two small heads turned simultaneously towards her, Paul, the taller doe-eyed boy, grabbed the younger one by the shirt and tugged him from a frog they had been poking at.

Despite there jog back they came in dripping wet, leaving a bit of mud with every step as her boys made their way to the kitchen to steal a treat.

Jim, her husband, hid a smile behind the morning paper as Mary made a sour face at the mess on her once clean floors.

The rain pattered against the roof of their home. The radio in their living room was played softly to fill up the silence. Jim sat in his chair, smoking as he flipped through a book, Her sons stood hunched over the coffee table as they played with their small metal cars(which was essentially just hurling them across the wood surface), laughing as they collided them at high speeds.

Mary is neatly folding the laundry when she spots her oldest from the corner of her eye.

Paul is bending at odd angles as if he’s trying to pop his back, every so often one of his hands reaches over his shoulders to scratch at a shoulder blade. He looked relatively uncomfortable but the will to keep playing seemed to keep him distracted for the time being.

Mary spoke up when a huge grimace crossed over his small face.

“Does your back hurt, Paul?” 

The other two in the living room turned to face Paul, who scrunched his face up as he let his arms fall defeated, “M’ shoulders hurt…” He whined.

“Did you fall today?” Mary immediately began to question.

“No”

“Did you fall asleep in a weird position last night?” her brows furrowed in worry.

“Nuh-uh”

“Do you feel sick?” 

“Not really…” Paul trailed off quietly.

Between them, Mike peered over the coffee table he sat behind. His head bouncing between Paul and his Mother as they talked.

Mary untwisted one of Jim’s dress shirts as her eyes swept over her oldest son.

“Well, you might just be sore from playing outside today” She offered as an answer. 

Paul’s attention remained centered on the red car in his hands, little fingers spun plastic wheels.

That should have been the end of it.

Mary wakes up to hands shaking her shoulder and Mike’s voice calling out to her.

She opens her eyes and it takes her a moment to adjust but when she finally sees the panic on her son’s face all remnants of sleep are gone instantly.

“Mike? What’s wrong, dear?”

Mike tugs on his nightshirt before he answers in a low voice, as if not to wake his father.

“Paul won’t stop crying”

With her youngest close behind Mary enters the shared bedroom in record time. She turns on the lights to see Paul curled up against his pillow, head buried beneath his blanket. Muffled cries filled the space.

“Oh, Paul…” Marry sighed. She moves closer and moves the blanket off her oldest’s face. Tear-stained cheeks and shiny brown eyes greet her.

“Paul, can you tell me what’s wrong?” Mary asked in a hushed tone, hand going straight to his forehead to check for a fever.

He was only slightly warmer than usual.

“I need to check then, honey, I’m going to need you to sit up so I can look at your back, okay?” Mary was officially nurse mode as she helped Paul sit up, her heart aching a bit as he winced in doing so.

When his nightshirt came off her mind went blank for a moment.

There was bruising along Paul’s shoulder blades and Mary _ wished _ she could say that the strangest thing was that the bruises seemed to _ mirror _ each other.

But no, the strangest part was the tiny lumps sticking out of his skin, right in the middle of the bruises.

“Alright, Paul, I’m going to touch your back, tell me if it hurts” Mary was quick to adopt her ’nurse’ voice, the tone she would adopt to seem more confident with her patients. Paul nodded as he rubbed at his wet eyes.

Mary reached out a steady hand and pressed down around his right shoulder. Everything felt fine until she touched the lump. The area around it was warmer than the rest of the skin, it was soft and, dare she say, almost felt malleable as it moved along with her touch.

She would have continued examining had Paul not screamed bloody murder. 

Mary flinched violently as she retracted her hand. Paul’s crying picked up again briefly and Mike was beginning to look upset from where he sat on his own bed.

The pounding of feet could be heard, Jim entered the room looking a mixture of tired, confused and fearful.

“Mary? What's going on?”

Mary stood and faced her husband. 

“Paul’s back hurts, there are some lumps and bruises on his back, we may have to take him to a doctor in the morning” Mary sighed as he placed a kiss on the top of Paul’s head.

“He can’t deal with the pain, I'm going to have to go to and get some Paregoric from another nurse nearby so he can at least rest” Mary explained as she went to get dressed.

She went quickly on her bike to the other home which thankfully only a few blocks away, apologizing for having to wake up the other woman and securing the medicine in her bag.

Mary makes it back home in under an hour.

When Jim opens the door for her his face is pale and her heart skips a beat.

“Jim? Did something happen?” She pushed her way past her husband. She spots her youngest sitting on the couch, arms crossed and a rather annoyed expression on his face.

“Dad won’t let me back in my room!” Mike ratted out.

_ “Jim” _Mary repeated, her husband simply pulled her along back to the room with Paul.

Paul looked exhausted, his shirt remained off and he was only sniffling, Paul heaves in another breath as he calms down. He looks better, Mary thinks.

“His, uh…” Jim starts as he remains in the doorway, his hand that holds a cigarette points to his own back as he stutters.

Mary listened to her husband’s frantic mumbling as she walked closer to Paul.

When she saw them, she felt pale.

They were covered in grey down, and somehow the bruising had disappeared. Mary didn’t know how they showed up so fast.

Small, delicate wings.

_ "Peter Micheal McCartney!" _

Mary was taken out of her trance by her husband pulling back her youngest from the doorway. 

_ "Dad! I wanna see!" _Mike cried out as Jim grabbed around the waist and hauled him to the living room.

Soon it was just mother and son in the room. 

“Mama?” Paul’s light voice cut through the silence. Mary gently reached out to hold her son’s face, she wiped the remains of a tear with her thumb. 

“Yes, Paulie?” She whispered down at him. 

Paul blinked sluggishly, struggling to keep his eyes open. 

“Can I go to sleep now?” 

Mary wondered if Paul even registered the new additions on his back. She would have asked, but her heart ached from having witnessed him cry, and she simply nodded as she brushed his hair back.

“Of course, dear”

Mary didn’t know whether or not to help him lay down, hands hovering close as Paul moved to lay on his side.

Her boy was out in an instant.

She could only stare down at his sleeping form, at his back and the wings.

God, what was she going to do?

Mary lays awake underneath her covers, sleep evades her and by the way her husband is changing positions every few minutes she knows he’s in the same boat. Between them Mike is passed out, drooling onto the pillow Jim had given, the tantrum he had thrown over not being able to see his older brother effectively tiring him out.

Mary spends the rest of the night planning out Paul’s childhood.

Mary makes sure to drill into her sons that the wings on Paul’s back need to remain a secret because as soon as Mike finds out the next day he’s gushing over them and Mary just barely manages to catch him from running out into the streets and announcing it to the world.

The wings remain small for a decent enough time, she has him wearing either vests or jackets to hide the lumps on his back because she can’t keep Paul inside no matter how hard she tries.

When school starts again their routine consists of waking up, eating breakfast and finally spending half an hour wrapping Paul’s wings against him with medical gauze until they’re flat under his uniform.

They grow steadily, grey down is slowly replaced by small blue feathers. Paul is ten years old and his mother has purchased so many vests; enough that he’d be able to wear a clean one every day for at least two weeks.

Paul is ten years old when he meets another.

The sun is beating down above them, he’s outside with his school mates as they pass the remaining lunch hour out in the yard, kicking a beat-up football. 

A friend gives it a rather strong kick, sending it over Paul’s head and across the field. Paul gives his friend a dirty look, since it had been aimed at him_ Paul _had to retrieve it. He breaks out into a sprint.

The ball rolls past a small group of kids. Paul uses his foot to stop it from rolling into a ditch, he turns around to kick it back to his friends when one of them says something that makes Paul freeze in place.

_ “Do you really have wings?” _ a curious voice says behind him.

Paul turns towards the group so fast that his neck aches at the action. He’s ready to launch himself into rambling of how he doesn’t even know what_ birds _ are when he realizes that they aren’t even paying attention to him.

There's a girl in his year, her hair is a mess and her knees and skirt are dirty. She’s standing proudly in the middle of the huddled group, working her jacket off as Paul takes a step closer. 

“Wings?” he finds himself asking before he can stop himself.

“Yeah!” she answers, when her jacket comes off they’re met with green feathers.

Other kids are gathering around them, some confused, others in awe. 

The wings poke through jagged slits from the shirt. Paul wonders if she cut them herself.

Suddenly,_ he’s _itching to get his shirt off, underneath the vest and bandages his wings shift as he feels a bubble of joy. Paul has never felt the urge to show them off, too scared of what others would think and the warnings given to him by his parents. 

But as he sees the dozen of awed faces around him and that the girl’s just like him, Paul wants to show them off to everyone.

“Wanna touch them?” She offers to a brunette girl. The brunette reaches out steadily and the wing meets her half-way. The brunette lets out a startled yelp. From the corner of his eye, Paul can see another boy run away and he wonders if she scared him.

She flaunts them around until one of the teachers calls for their return. Paul watches her walk away as she puts on her jacket with a group of kids trailing her, asking question after question.

He’s about to do the same when one of his friends run up and reminds him that their teacher brought cookies, a treat that would be given to them as soon as they got back to class.

Paul makes a break for it with his friend, telling himself that he could always ask her tomorrow.

She doesn't come back tomorrow

The air is chill around them and Paul wears a large jacket on the first day of the new school year.

Lunch break finally comes and he sees her.

She’s sitting by herself on one of the benches and is possibly the saddest thing Paul has ever seen. 

She isn’t crying but Paul can tell just how sad she is. 

Her hair is neatly brushed back, hands pick at the pink lace on her dress. Every time someone tries to speak to her she keeps her eyes on the dirt in front of her.

The thing that sticks out to Paul the most is her small, red jacket.

Even from afar Paul can tell it’s made of thin material. Material that could easily show anything sticking out of her back.

Or the lack thereof.

It’s obvious to Paul her wings are gone. Something drops in his stomach and his throat closes up and he wants to _cry_ for her. 

A week passes and Paul doesn’t see her outside anymore.

A month passes and he doesn't see her again.

Paul is twelve when they realize the wings have stopped growing. The feathers are shades of bright blues and white. When he stretches his wings out they just barely brush his fingertips.

**Author's Note:**

> the tumblr post for this showing the birds theyre modeled off of is here : https://silver-maxwell.tumblr.com/post/189154796725/the-beatles-are-the-only-4-people-in-the-world
> 
> I wanna do so much with this!


End file.
